


Home

by flyingllamas



Category: Warcraft - All Media Types, World of Warcraft
Genre: Gen, pre-Legion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-12
Updated: 2015-12-12
Packaged: 2018-05-06 07:21:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5407931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flyingllamas/pseuds/flyingllamas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's been too long since she's had a home, and too long since she's had to lose one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Home

 

Draenor had been the first place to feel like home in a long time, after years had passed from the time she’d been raised in the Den in Durotar with orc pups her age who cared not if their strange sister had tusks so different from their own. It had been torn from her, like her mother had, like her life had, when a visit in the Barrens with the intent of healing and giving became instead destruction and seizure that haunted the corners of her mind to this day instead.

Now, enmeshed in a net of limbs cast by sleep in a warm room incensed with the smell of low burning embers, Elpis felt like she was the closest to having a home since she’d left the Den with only an axe to her name. Even then, home had been a strange, mottled mix of orc and troll with the occasional boar and wolf. Now, in the center of pile of many different races and a Frostwolf or two (though they all snored in the end), it almost felt like home more than the Den had.

Unprepared for the harshness of the peninsula, those who had followed her to Draenor had quickly resorted to sleeping in large piles in the newly built garrison, as no amount of fires or furs seemed to be able to keep the cold of the perpetual winter out of their bones. The orcs and trolls had no trouble with this, as even back on their home world it was common to pile up if needed. Others, like the blood elves, goblins, and an assort of ragtag outsiders, had needed the convincing that only a few bitter nights and close calls with frostbite could give. Only the Forsaken seemed unbothered, ever pacing the garrison at night, unable to sleep or feel the cold.

No sounds carried over the air to her, other than the quiet pop of dying braziers, and the dimness of the room suggested to her that she had woken far earlier than necessary. Still, though, she carefully started to extract herself from the snoring pile, preparing to step over splayed limbs and scattered weapons and clutter dragged in by the pile. An arm around her waist stopped her from pulling herself up from the ground fully.

“‘Lana, where you goin’?” Uzoma sleepily slurred, using her childhood name. The Shadow Hunter had, sometimes inadvertently, followed her across continents and worlds to this new home. It would not be the same without him.  “De sun’s not even up yet, lay back down!”

“Not everyone is as dedicated ta Samedi as ya are,” she replied, feeling the Darkspear accent settle back down into her voice as she pried his fingers off, one by one, and pushed him back into the pile. “Ya sleep more like de dead den de Forsaken.”

“And not everyone has de blessing of Shango to have such energy before the sun rises,” he retorted and she sighed. “Besides, I’ve got a sunnier mood than dose rot walkers, don’t I?” he said with a breathless laugh before reaching for her again. She smacked his hand and he whined, but was ignored.

“There’s tings dat need doin’,” she told him, standing up and picking her way across the room before he could grab her again.

“Not at dis time of day!” he grumbled after her, but his protests went unheard as she promptly exited the room. “Crazy woman.”

 

 

Now that she was out in the air, she could see why she had awoken so early. The earth and air almost vibrated with the energy coursing through them, like a harp string which had been struck violently. She had a feeling the lava and water in the back of the garrison roiled with similar turmoil.  It was nothing around the level of upheaval of the Cataclysm, but something had set the elements on edge.

The air brought in vicious flurries of snow which scraped against her cheeks and chilled her tusks as she peered up at the ramparts. The Forsaken guards who had taken their silent vigil during the night seemed undisturbed by the energy she felt, though they seemed unsettled about something else. She paused for a second, eying them before looking across the span of the garrison, watching flurries race across the crusted snow and a lone Draenei ghost while she thought. The Undead were not to be taken lightly, and would likely not take any intrusion, which they deemed unnecessary, well. Unlike Uzoma, she had no quarrel with their presence within the garrison, and decided to ascend to the ramparts to speak with them.

The wind up on the ramparts was far worse than in the shelter down below, screaming across the the narrow walkway and through small gaps in the wall. Elpis carefully made her way to the first tower overlooking the newly built harbor. One Forsaken guard stood vigil in it, ignoring her presence until she stood by him. He finally swept into a bow before reaching under his helmet and knocking his jaw free. Elpis watched curiously as he broke off small icicles on the teeth and joint before reattaching it.

“Commander,” he greeted her. “I apologize for the delay. Though the Forsaken do not feel most of the cold this land has to offer, we find that sometimes our bodies are not as unaffected as we’d like them to be.”

Elpis nodded, trying to seem somewhat solemn as she imagined having to take off her own jaw to deal with the weather. Seeing the death knight staring at her, she yanked herself out of her thoughts and cleared her throat.

“Anything come up during the night dat I should be knowing about?” she asked, eying the bay, shaking off the clinging Darkspear accent from speaking with Uzoma. The Forsaken shuffled a bit in place and twisted his arms outward, causing ice to shatter of his armor. It rang out as it hit the floor of the watch tower, before blowing off the edge. Finally, he answered.

“Just one thing, Commander,” he admitted lowly, and handed her a spyglass from a case strapped to his waist. She telescoped it out and pointed it as he directed.

She almost couldn’t see it at first. The heavy fog which draped itself on the Zangar Sea in the early morning should have obscured anything the Forsaken would have seen during the night, but finally her eye caught on the small dark splotch in the distance.

“What exactly is this I be looking at?”

“We’re not entirely sure, Commander, but our sharper eyed scouts and a few far-seeing shamans from the Frost Wolf tribe are speculating it is a friendly ship. It flies under a Horde banner.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

“It is...obscured, by magic which seems to have fel roots,” he admitted. “There isn’t a crew aboard that we can see, though that might be obscured by the barrier we’re sensing. We were about to come to you for advice when you appeared. It seems you have a knack for knowing trouble.”

Unease roiled in Elpis’s stomach in time with the elements.

“Not I, mon,” she murmured as she lowered the spyglass and handed it back to him. “The elements.”

The guard nodded, though more in acknowledgement than understanding. He could not feel the unrest of the elements dancing upon his long-dead skin as she did.

“What would you have us do, Commander?”

She squinted out across the harbor into the sea, towards the spot where she knew the boat bobbed silently in the morning fog. An ill omen to the place she could now call home, she felt, as she finally decided her course of action. She reached for the horn at her belt, and the Forsaken guard was already moving off of the tower as her lungs filled to sound it.

The garrison exploded into motion as bodies streamed out of buildings and tents. One red haired troll paused at the door of the main hold, peering up at her with a rush’kah mask in one hand and daggers in the other. She nodded at Uzoma as she surveyed the action below and he took it as a sign to fully don the mask. War drums guided the rhythm of the turbulent army as she steeled herself.

 _Shango guide my strikes on this day_ , she thought as she descended from the ramparts, _so this home will not join the others in ruin_.

 

 

Though it was many hours before the mysteriously abandoned ship actually docked at harbor the garrison stood at ready like a taut bow string, ready to unleash hell at any moment. Elpis herself felt the tense energy from the elements and the suddenly silent drums as the boat glided to rest in the harbor. Long ago applied war paint had frozen to her cheeks and arms and many times, she had to reapply the blessing Shango to her weapons while she waited for whatever chaos was to come. Somewhere behind her, she could feel Uzoma and his hunters ready, crouching in the shadows. Other soldiers waited in choke points on the road leading up to the garrison and archers stood at the ready on the ramparts. Whoever had not been able to carry a weapon was waiting back near the springs, as mana was too precious of a resource to waste for portals to evacuate.

She didn’t know what she actually was expecting to step off the boat, but a lone blood elf was definitely not the threat she was expecting. As he made his way to her from the harbor, she noticed that the dark horns she had taken for a helm were instead sprouting from his head. She could also feel the fel taint of the Legion which raced ahead of him, disturbing the elements before it with foul whispers of ill begot power. Uzoma hissed and the rest of the army shifted uneasily. The elf smirked and a sick green fire flared behind the blindfold obscuring his eyes, obviously sensing a change in the forces before him.

Demon hunters were not unheard of in the many years since the fall of Illidan Stormrage, but most had been hunted down and killed or imprisoned. To see one walking around with such freedom and arrogance did not bode anything well for the place Elpis had called home for the past five years, even though some part of her carelessly wished at one time for some at her side when cleaving through the Legion forces in Tanaan.

Finally stopping a few yards in front of her, the Demon hunter swept into an elaborate bow only elves could accomplish.

“Bal’a dash, Commander Elpis,” the elf greeted as he straightened, before stopping and tilting his head to the side, as if pondering something. “Or would it be Io’lana now? I hear you’ve returned to your troll roots at last, putrid as they are.”

Uzoma flew from the shadows with a snarl, daggers sending bright sparks to the snow as they clashed with one of the demon hunter’s glaives. He sprang back by Elpis’s side as its twin followed in its wake.

“Uzoma, be still!” she snarled at him quietly before returning her attention to the demon hunter. She could hear the creak of bows being drawn behind her and Spirit Wolves, summoned by her wrath, growled by her legs.

“It would be wise of you to control your pets, Commander,” the blood elf spat, glaives still at ready.

“It would be wise of you to control your tongue,” she retorted with equal venom, “especially when bulk of my forces are focused on you and you alone, elf.”

“Your forces could do nothing to me,” he growled. “Nothing can stop the will of the Illidari.”

“I seem to recall being able to before,” Elpis said, and the flames of his eyes jumped. “Now, state your intentions, or be gone!”

For one last moment, the elf studied the forces mustered behind her before laughing.

“The Legion returns once more to invade Azeroth,” he proclaimed to the army, “and there is nothing you may do about it without my brethren's help!”

“Stinkin’ elves and their egos,” Uzoma grumbled behind her, and Elpis had to agree.

 

 

After the commotion had settled down with sun and the demon hunter had (reluctantly) been admitted to the garrison with a scroll from the Warchief himself, Elpis removed her armor and sat by the pit of coals in one of the rooms of the hold. The elements still sang restlessly around her, but she had soothed them until they only muttered their displeasure instead of screaming it.

In the distance, she could hear muffled orders from the demon hunter in the room he had requisitioned. He’d soon learn the error of his ways as the night went on.She hoped to find and elf-sicle in the morning instead of  more complaining. Even the other elves made a point to distance themselves, either due to his allegiance to the Illidari or his ego, ridiculously inflated even for an elf.

Elpis stirred the coals with a heavy heart, though not due to news of the Legion itself. The Legion inspired fear in her, fear for her people and the fate of their planet, not the despair which caused her heart to feel as though it had been weighed down with stones. Though this was perhaps the longest claim she’d ever been able to have on a home, even it had come to an end. In the light of the new day, the majority of the troops in the garrison, herself included, would be traveling back to Orgrimmar with the thrice-damned demon hunter before setting sail for the Broken Isles.

She started slightly when a plate clattered down by her side. Uzoma stood over her, stretching to his full height before settling down by her with his own plate of food. A small, leather bag was tied to his belt. His wet, braidless hair and lack of warpaint suggested he’d just been at the hot springs cleaning up. She ignored her food and continued to poke at the coals. Uzoma noticed and leaned against her shoulder, a tusk poking her before he turned his head.

It almost like sitting on the beach again, like they used to when they were small and neither really had their tusks yet. They were so far from that beach now, literally worlds (and timelines) away. She vaguely wondered how their lives would go in the Azeroth that corresponded to this one, if they were even born. Would they live to see the Echo Isles?

“Talk to me, ‘Lana,” he crooned. “What’s weighin’ on ya? Other den dat demon hunter. He can stick dose glaives up ‘is--”

“‘m fine, Uzoma,” she told him, and picked at the food on her plate. He snorted and moved behind her. Fingers began to tease at the few braids in her hair, carefully unplaiting them and pulling out the beads. She could see him open the leather bag out of the corner her eye and withdraw a carved bone comb and a small bowl, in which he placed the beads. This was another thing they used to do growing up, though it was more for practice since they were young enough to not have earned braids yet. She’d missed him earning most of his, she realized with a sharp pang in her heart.

“Does it bother ya dat we gotta head back ta Azeroth?” he asked as he worked the comb through her red henna-dyed hair. She’d have to dye it again soon - the white hair she’d been born with that firmly placed her as a Spirit Walker for the tribe was starting to show again. It was still much darker than Uzoma’s own hair, which was as red as a jungle raptor’s scales, and much shorter than his after being sheared away by an Iron Horde axe. “Abeni will be glad ta be seein’ ya. She’s probably bossed Ekwueme inta so many cute babies by now.”

They’d had to leave both of their raptors behind in the Echo Islands when they came to Draenor -- they’d never expected to come back in the first place, after what their Warchief had asked of them. As they settled into Frostfire Ridge, it seemed cruel to bring the tropical raptors to such a cold place, so in Azeroth they’d stayed. A small smile came to her face as she thought about Abeni. The purple raptor had taken a liking to Uzoma’s own green one, though she’d usually shown it through abusing the timid, smaller raptor.

“I’d be glad ta see her as well,” Elpis replied. “I’m losin’ another home again, Uzoma.”

He placed the comb to side for a moment and grabbed a white bone bead inscribed with twin wolves given to her by her mentor, who had long since passed to walk with his ancestors.

“Ya’ve not lost a home since ya came back ta us, Io’lana,” he told her as he worked the bead into a small plait behind her ear. He carefully tied it off and grabbed another bead, awarded to her by the tribe after the events of Ice Crown. “Home don't have ta be a place. Home is in dose around ya, not in . It’s followed ya everywhere, in da people dat follow ya. Everytime we’ve seen each other, I see de same people with ya. You jus’ haven’t realized it yet, but it’ll follow ya right back to Azeroth, and fight alongside you in de Broken Isles.”

Elpis was silent as he continued to replace the braids in her hair. Finally, Uzoma tied of the last plait in her short hair and leaned forward to rest his chin on her shoulder. His arms loosed circled around her waist.

“Does dat mean you’ll be dere?” she quietly asked. He chuckled quietly in her ear.

“I don’ think I’ve left ya behind yet, ‘Lana, other den when I had no choice,” he said, “though it be up to da Warchief. At dis point, I be thinkin’ he reckons he work best together anyway.”

The first of the sleeping pile, presumably from the watch that had just turned over, started to filter into the room and onto the straw-filled mats that littered the floor. Uzoma pulled back from her to pack up the small leather bag before tossing to the side of the room where her belongings were. He grabbed the two plates and winked at her.

“I’ll be back,” he said. “Save a spot for me, will ya?”

“Ya better be quick den, mon,” she sassed back at him, though she did pull two mats together by the coal pit. After he left, she curled up on the mat closest by the fire and let herself ponder what Abeni and Ekwueme’s raptorlings would turn out like as she dozed.

 

 

It was only after he joined her later in the night and stroked one of the braids in her that she realized she had a new bead. She’d have to look in the morning, but she had a feeling she knew what it was.

Sneaky bastard.

 

 


End file.
